In the past several decades, remarkable achievements in global food security have been made. Food production has grown significantly and outpaced the population growth. Household food consumption has increased, and undernourishment has declined dramatically. However, due to multiple risks and threats, the number of hungry people in the world has been rising since 2015, with more than 800 million people currently suffering from hunger. 

After decades of development, China has eliminated hunger and poverty. In the new development stage, the Chinese government has proposed new and higher development goals and made important commitments to reach carbon neutrality before 2060.

During this new development era, China's agrifood systems face multiple challenges, and urgently need to be transformed towards nutritious and healthy, green and low-carbon, efficient, resilient, and inclusive. Current policy formulation and implementation primarily focus on quantity-oriented food security. However, the consideration of nutrition and health, green and low-carbon goals is minimal. Therefore, repositioning agricultural support policies to facilitate the transformation of agrifood systems has become a vital issue in China and also worldwide.

Under this context, the Academy of Global Food Economics and Policy(AGFEP) of China Agricultural University, the China Academy of Rural Development (CARD) of Zhejiang University, the Center for International Food and Agricultural Economics (CIFAE) of Nanjing Agricultural University, the Institute of Agricultural Economics and Development (IAED) of Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences and the International Food Policy Research Institute(IFPRI) jointly published the 2022 China and Global Food Policy Report.

The 2022 report examines how agrifood systems can be transformed to achieve multiple development goals. It highlights the evolution of agricultural support policies and analyzes the impact on nutrition and health, resources and environment, carbon emissions, common prosperity, and international trade. The report is written based on cross-sectoral and multidisciplinary research, highlighting Chinese practices from a global perspective and aiming to provide scientific and rigorous evidence for policymakers, researchers, and practitioners of agrifood systems.

Key Findings

·      1. The intensity of China's agricultural support has increased significantly. Between 2018 and 2020, it accounted for 22 percent of the agricultural GDP, which was close to the world average of 23 percent.

·      2. China’s populations are facing the challenges of poor dietary structure and unbalanced nutrition. The supply of nutritious and healthy food can be increased and population’s ability to obtain such food can be improved by measures such as increasing subsidies to producers, increasing investment in research and development (R&D) aimed at improving yields of fresh agricultural produce and at developing technology that reduces food wastage, and increasing transfer payments to rural low-income families. These measures can result in increases in the supply of, and access to, healthy and nutritious food and can thus improve the dietary quality of both urban and rural populations. Increasing investment in R&D of nutritious food production can improve the intake of nutritious and healthy food for 58 percent of urban population and 41 percent of rural population.

·      3. Adjusting agricultural support policies and promoting the development of green and low-carbon technologies in agriculture can reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from agrifood systems by approximately 29.1 to 42.4 percent by 2060, while ensuring food security, which also has high economic returns. If it further considers the environmental benefits brought about by the reduction of carbon emissions from agrifood systems, economic returns are even higher.

·      4. The investment in high-standard farmland construction and green agricultural research and promotion has a high return, which improves the total agricultural production capacity, reduces inputs and carbon emissions, and has significant positive economic and environmental effects. It promotes the achievement of multiple goals such as food security, economic efficiency improvement, health, and low green carbon.

·      5. China's fiscal expenditure on agriculture has narrowed the income gap between urban and rural populations. It has done so by promoting the increase of farmers’ incomes, accelerating the transfer of the rural labor force, and promoting the integration of urban and rural industries. The effect of financial support for agriculture in narrowing the income gap between urban and rural areas is more pronounced in underdeveloped areas where agricultural industry support and poverty alleviation expenditure play a greater role.

·      6. Reducing the minimum purchase price to the amount that can cover the total cost of agricultural production and combine the minimum price with full-cost insurance can increase the efficiency of the government’s fiscal expenditures. Under the proposal, the government’s fiscal expenditure efficiency can be increased by up to 8.6 times without negatively affecting farmers’ grain welfare and changing grain output and import.    

Policy Recommendations

·      1. Agricultural support policies should be repositioned to promote a win-win situation of nutrition and health security and green and low-carbon development. Agrifood systems should be transformed in various ways and at multiple levels in order to achieve the major national development goals on health and environment and on carbon peak and carbon neutrality.

·      2. Support policies should be optimized according to the concept of “Big Food”: promote nutrition-oriented food production, diversify food supply and consumption, and reduce the price of nutritious food in order to promote balanced diets and nutritional health. By increasing support to producers of nutritious food and by promoting agricultural science and technology while reducing food loss, the capacity to supply nutritious and healthy food can be enhanced. Transfer payment policies and food subsidy vouchers can also help low-income people improve their food purchasing ability. At the same time, healthy diets should be promoted and nutrition-related diseases prevented through improved dietary guidance and nutrition education; to that end, nutrition knowledge classes should be conducted in rural and urban areas.

·      3. To ensure food security, agricultural support policies should be transformed such that they pursue green and sustainable development. With that in mind, adoption of agricultural green and low-carbon technologies and research and development (R&D) of breakthrough technologies in agricultural emissions reduction should be further strengthened. This specifically includes the promotion and application of slow and controlled-release fertilizers, deep fertilization machinery, and organic-inorganic compound fertilizers. R&D investment in emerging green technologies such as smart fertilizer, transgenic technology, gene-editing technology, and biological carbon sequestration technology should be vastly scaled up. Furthermore, through financial support and improved mechanism of carbon trading markets, market entities should be incentivized to actively participate in emissions reduction.

·      4. The structure of agricultural production support should be adjusted to the production of both nutritious and low-carbon foods, i.e., to minimize the tradeoff and maximize the synergy. In addition, more public investment should be allocated to high-standard farmland construction and green agricultural R&D and extension that has the potential to achieve multiple goals of food systems including food security, nutrition, protection of natural resources and carbon emissions reduction.

·      5. The expenditure structure and regional distribution of fiscal supports for agriculture should be optimized to promote the goal of common prosperity. Local governments should be encouraged to explore innovative measures that: support agriculture under local conditions; strengthen coordination between fiscal support measures and other policies; increase fiscal support for agriculture in rural areas, especially in underdeveloped areas; improve the inclusiveness of agrifood systems; narrow the income gap between urban and rural population; and promote the integrated development of urban and rural areas to pursue common prosperity.

·      6. Agricultural support policies should be shifted from the “amber” to the “green” box, so the risk of agricultural trade friction can be reduced and the resilience of agrifood systems can be improved. In this regard, policy innovations must be introduced. The awareness of WTO rules should be enhanced as should the ability to apply these rules, promote and lead WTO reform, reshape international rules, and create a stable and sound new international order.

2022 China and Global Food Policy Report.pdf